People pursue outdoor activities because it's fun, entertaining and enjoyable. We are a family oriented blog coming to you from Lake D'Arbonne in north Louisiana with reports about living on the lake, fishing and hunting, a little humor and outdoor news. We love telling stories about the outdoors. Some of them are even true.

Almost kilt by the bird flew

You’ll have to forgive the spelling in today’s headline, but I was a little shook up when I wrote it.

You see, I was almost done in by the bird flew a couple of nights ago while running a couple of yo-yo’s on my boat dock a couple minutes after 11 p.m. The bird flew left me with a racing heart, the sudden urge to go to the restroom and temporary muttering of quickly repeated non-understandable phrases.

Here’s how I contracted the disease.

There’s a huge Christmas tree that is partially submerged about 10 feet off the boat dock. It just refuses to sink all the way under. Well, as I was walking out on the dock in the dark to check the far yo-yo with my trusty little flashlight, I just happened to shine it toward the floating top. That’s when the symptoms hit like a brick. A big hen and drake mallard apparently thought it was a duck hotel, didn’t like me interrupting their vacation and came splashing and quacking out of the top right over my head, quite thoroughly breaking the previous dead silence of the night.

You see. It was bird flew, not bird flu.

A week or so ago, I had a similar experience. The moon was pretty bright and I was slowly working my way down the dock with my little flashlight. I don’t turn on all the lights on the dock because I don’t want to make the whole neighborhood think a spaceship has landed. As I walked out toward the end of the pier, again in total peaceful silence, I was met by a sudden loud squawking/screeching/horrible sound that sounded like the devil himself. Did I mention loud? It was also followed by the flapping of wings as a giant blue heron took off from his perch on the corner of the dock. Am I going to have to get a “no vacancy” sign for these crazy birds?

You think that’s funny? You turn out all the lights, or close your eyes, turn off all other noises and pretend you are walking down a dark boat dock at 11 p.m.. Turn up the volume all the way up and hit the “play audio” button on this link.